Abstract

Purpose:Our real‐time skin dose tracking system (DTS) has been upgraded to monitor dose for the micro‐angiographic fluoroscope (MAF), a high‐resolution, small field‐of‐view x‐ray detector.Methods:The MAF has been mounted on a changer on a clinical C‐Arm gantry so it can be used interchangeably with the standard flat‐panel detector (FPD) during neuro‐interventional procedures when high resolution is needed in a region‐of‐interest. To monitor patient skin dose when using the MAF, our DTS has been modified to automatically account for the change in scatter for the very small MAF FOV and to provide separated dose distributions for each detector. The DTS is able to provide a color‐coded mapping of the cumulative skin dose on a 3D graphic model of the patient. To determine the correct entrance skin exposure to be applied by the DTS, a correction factor was determined by measuring the exposure at the entrance surface of a skull phantom with an ionization chamber as a function of entrance beam size for various beam filters and kVps. Entrance exposure measurements included primary radiation, patient backscatter and table forward scatter. To allow separation of the dose from each detector, a parameter log is kept that allows a replay of the procedure exposure events and recalculation of the dose components. The graphic display can then be constructed showing the dose distribution from the MAF and FPD separately or together.Results:The DTS is able to provide separate displays of dose for the MAF and FPD with field‐size specific scatter corrections. These measured corrections change from about 49% down to 10% when changing from the FPD to the MAF.Conclusion:The upgraded DTS allows identification of the patient skin dose delivered when using each detector in order to achieve improved dose management as well as to facilitate peak skin‐dose reduction through dose spreading.Research supported in part by Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation and NIH Grants R43FD0158401, R44FD0158402 and R01EB002873

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